The #1 Secret to Losing Bodyfat, Your Mind!!

Everybody wants to know the fastest way to dropping unwanted body fat, I mean who wouldn't right? There is something to be said about looking at a physique where you can clearly see muscle separation and everything just flows together nicely.

People will do anything to lose body fat nowadays; everything from fasting to nothing but a fruit and water diet for several days on end, to taking pills that can speed up metabolism and nullify your appetite. Some people will even go as far as poisoning themselves or making themselves vomit after meals to try to drop the fat!!

While most of you probably already know that the word “dieting” is involved in dropping body fat, you may not understand exactly what people will go through emotionally as well as physically when trying to get to below average body fat and eventually into the realm of SHREDDED!!

I've found that no matter how you eat, work out, or no matter what you take, sooner or later mother nature will take over and you're going to be extremely hungry. This hunger becomes worse as you get leaner and leaner. You will find yourself irritable, restless, and occasionally foggy-minded as you continue to become leaner and leaner.

For most people this process is going to be a set number of weeks or time frame until they either A. get as lean as they desire, or B. eventually cave in from hunger and throw the entire process to the wayside!!

As serious as I may come across in my online personality, in reality I'm a big joker from time to time. Have you ever played the game “Would you rather?” This is a stupid game that helps kill time and can also be funny, because all you're really doing is giving someone 2 different scenarios and asking them which one they'd rather do.

So earlier today I'm riding along with a friend and we are asking each other what the other person would rather do given certain case scenarios.

I asked my friend “Would you rather be rich and confined to eating the same diet food day in and day out for the rest of your life, or be able to eat anything you wanted but limited to the money you're making right now?”

So then he started asking me specifics of what his diet had to consist of if he chose to have all the money he could ever want. I said to him, “You're limited to 3 meals each day….eggs and oatmeal for breakfast, chicken with rice and broccoli for lunch, and a steak and a potato for dinner. You must eat these foods every single day without fail.”

Then he asked me if any condiments were allowed. I told him that he could use condiments, as long as the foods didn't deviate from those 3 meals a day.

His answer to my question would be the very best thing I've ever heard to this day when it comes to putting dieting into perspective!! His answer covered more than just dieting to me, it said a lot about life and how we often look at food!!

“I'm going to make my life so fucking crazy that food will be the last thing on my mind!!”

I thought about this answer for a few seconds. It made a lot of sense to me and it inspired me to think more about the mind-frame of someone dieting hard and how I could explain it to people in a way they could understand it and put this thought into practice!!

You see, dieting is all about a strong mind. I don't care how hard you work out, how many days a week you spend in the gym, or what you decide to put in your body, at the end of the day it's all about how much you're willing to go through in order to get the ripped up physique you want!!

The prime times people tend to fall off the wagon with their diet is when they're either bored or obsessing over food. You see, being bored will make you want something to do, and eating is the fastest solution to boredom because it's readily accessible for many people. This is already evident if they got fat to begin with from readily accessible food.

I've had many times in the past where I thought I was starving and then when I went out and did something to occupy myself I no longer thought about eating. So what my friend had said made a lot of sense, despite talking about it in a different sense. I simply processed it in a way that it related to what I would go through when I would diet down to drop fat.

I think if you can stay occupied and have other tasks or goals at hand rather than simply losing body fat, the two can play off each other. This would be similar to people who take a certain emotion and transform it into another emotion.

Some people can transfer fear into anger, feelings of loneliness into company, and feelings of hatred into love. They have trained their minds into transforming one form of energy/thought into another. Have you ever been scared of something and somehow found a way to turn that fear into aggression? You can do it with hunger too.

Besides simply occupying yourself with enough to stay busy and keep your mind off food, you can also transfer feelings of deprivation into focus and aggression. I have had times in the past where dieting had become the very fuel itself that continued to push me.

What I mean by that, is that it wasn't so much the end goal I sought after that became the driving force to continue moving forward, but it was the feeling during the diet itself that had given me energy and focus!! People who have been through an extremely strict diet may be able to relate to what I'm talking about here. You get to a point where you just feel like a machine…nothing can stop you and you enjoy that feeling!!

But eventually you become tired and worn down from periods of intense focus and the monotony that can come with dieting hard. It can also play mind tricks on you as you start getting leaner and leaner. You can feel depressed, have a false sense of what you're really looking at in the mirror (usually failing to see progress in your mind), and you can begin questioning the entire dieting process and your goals to begin with!!

This is when it's so important to stay busy. Not only will this keep your mind from obsessing over food, but an object in motion will be an object that stays in motion!! You may find that you begin accomplishing other life goals while in the process of trying to define your body!!

So many people try to put life on hold when they go through dieting. We drill it into our minds that nothing else in life matters other than getting shredded and having a great body, and until we reach that point then other things in life can fall off a bit. I'm guilty as charged on this one myself.

In the past I would put everything in my life on the back burner when I was trying to get leaner. I would do just enough to keep life in motion but my real 100% emphasis was solely on my body. But it doesn't need to be like this.

You can put 100% of your focus into your training when it's time to train, into your eating when it's time to eat, but in between these time frames there is nothing that obsessing over eating or training is going to do to make you any better!! You're simply wasting your energy and focus on what could be used to enhance your life in another area!!

One of the best pieces of advice I ever got from a bodybuilder was to keep things simple. Bodybuilders always want to over-complicate everything. The simple solution just seems too easy to work for us so we avoid it. That solution is consistency. Consistency will prevail over anything else you could do with your eating and training.

The best bodies are the ones that are in the gym consistently and eating healthy on a routine basis.

EFFECTIVE DIETING THAT YOU CAN STICK TO!!

I always tell people that the best diet and training plan is the plan that you can stick to!! Not every diet or routine is right for every individual. You need to look at things such as available time for training, meal prep, recovery, and allotting enough time to still handle life responsibilities.

In a perfect world would 6 meals a day of real food be better than 4 meals a day and 2 protein shakes? It probably would, but what sense would this make if it wasn't realistic for someone? I'd rather see someone consistently eat 4 meals a day and substitute a couple high quality protein shakes a day than try something unrealistic just to quit 2 weeks into their program!!

But one thing is for certain with any fat loss routine, you're going to be hungry sooner or later!! Don't fall victim to this nonsense about shredding all sorts of body fat and not feeling hungry at all. That is absolute garbage and I guarantee you that if you're not hungry then it's going to still be when you're carrying around a ton of extra fat!!

Fat is stored calories, approximately 3,500 stored calories in just 1lb of fat!! So when you're still fat then of course it's easier to not feel hungry, because you still have plenty of calories!! I'm talking about stepping into the land of cuts and abs here.

You're going to eventually get hungry, so if you can start training your mind to stay busy then you'll be better prepared to journey through these difficult times.

When I get leaner it definitely helps to have something to numb my appetite and give me extra energy. Lets face it, calories are energy. When you take away the calories then you're taking away the energy. When you begin to get extremely lean you will find days where you need to really pull it all together to get through a workout or even something that once seemed simple.

I have found simple things such as cleaning out my car or raking my yard to be extremely taxing when my body fat gets lower. It helps to have an effective fat burner when dieting to help make the day a little easier to tackle. By no means is a fat burner going to be your answer when it comes to getting ripped up, but it can certainly help!!

Once the diet is covered then this is when the fat burner will really shine. I use Red-Burner by Red Supplements and I use it for 2 reasons. The biggest reason is the appetite suppressant effect, and the other reason is the balance of ingredients. It's not overdone on stimulants, but it's more of a synergistic blend of ingredients that work to get the job done but don't have you up all night long.

When it comes to my daily meals I'm usually doing 4 whole food meals a day with 2 protein shakes, and with those shakes I'm either adding a healthy fat in with them or a healthy carb source. I will start my diet at a moderate level of carbs and fats and then gradually decrease them as I get further along.

The intake of fats and/or carbs also helps slow down the digestion of the protein drink and can make your protein count for a little more. Therefore I rarely just drink a shake without something with it. Remember, we are trying our best to mimic an actual meal here.

However you need to eat according to your schedule is the way you should eat. But don't be lazy about it and don't look for excuses to slack on nutrition and training hard. I've known people who have only eaten your standard 2-3x a day and have gotten great results.

I myself find smaller meals consumed more frequently throughout the day to be what works better for me. But that's me, and I'm not everybody!! But the one thing I want to make perfectly clear here is that you're going to get hungrier the leaner you get. This is when you need to have a very strong mind in order to sustain things and keep seeing more progress!!

So if you're obsessing over food or think it's harder for you than it is for others, then I want you to think of what you can do in order to stay busy and build your life outside of simply eating and training. Because whether or not you're eating just a few times a day or several times a day, you're going to get hungry if you're trying to get diced up!!

When it's time to eat, whether your meals are 3x a day or 6x a day, you give 100% to eating!!

When it's time to train, whether you're in the gym 2x a week or 6x a week, during the time you're in the gym you give 100% to your training!!

And in between, when you think you're about to go crazy, just think of one simple phrase to live by……….

“I'm going to make my life so fucking crazy that food will be the last thing on my mind!!”

Comments

Fantastic article John. You really hit the nail on the head. For me I was 230 lbs last year and couldn’t seem to stick to a set diet. Then I finally decided to forget about everything I had read and just do what worked for me.

Now I’m down to 183 and have cycled through different methods. Using some of your articles I’ve been able to take concepts and apply them to what I do. Thank you brother.